The strange disappearance of the cards

Something strange is going on. The formerly-hyped 'deck of cards' of the 55 most-wanted Saddamists has all but disappeared from public consciousness.

I've sprinkled some mention of the cards in a few posts below, but based on some new developments today I thought the topic was worthy of it's own post. Why? Well, a few more dead-enders were apparently set free today and are off to an undisclosed European location:

Baghdad, March, 8 (BNA) The US Forces in Iraq have recently released Former Iraqi Minister of Military Production Abdultawab Haweesh, and Foreign Undersecretary, Saad Al Faisal. Radio Sawa said Al Huwaish and Al Faisal left Baghdad soon after being released and headed to a European capital.

I admit to being a little confused with this, since we've heard no credible explanations from the adminstration explaining these releases. But the news shouldn't come as a surprise--we've done it before. Shortly before Christmas 2005 we released Dr. Germ and Mrs. Anthrax, the latter of whom was interviewed in this article before Saddam's regime fell. Interestingly, Mrs A attended school at the University of Missouri at Columbia.

But hold it, time for some backspin. The reporter pretends to be shocked, shocked that we could release such a dangerous individual who seemed so nice in the interview. Perhaps she could have researched the fact that Mrs. Ammash was reported to be near death in December 2004, a year before her release:

Lawyer Badee Izzat Aref said that in a meeting with former deputy prime minister Tariq Aziz, his jailed client said Ammash's health was deteriorating. "He (Aziz) strongly urged me to do all I can regarding the case of Mrs Huda Ammash because of her health is worsening due to cancer," Aref told Al-Arabiya satellite network. "It will lead to her death, no doubt."

We need to take a serious look into Iraqi medicine, since Aziz himself was recently given only a month to live, in December 2005. I've not seen his obituary yet, but it should be no surprise, as former regime leaders tend to slip in and out of cancer and death all the time.

But I digressed there a bit. Sorry. Search around the web and you'll find many examples of liberals with their shorts in a bunch over these releases. Others theorize the releases are merely bones thrown to Sunni radicals in an attempt to garner their support for the new government. Possible, but these people weren't Sunnis by definition, they were Ba'athists. They have a long history of being secular to go along with their long history of war crimes.

Besides, we've been told time and again that Saddam was incapable of a relationship with religious fundamentalists, including Sunnis, due to ideological differences. Why then would any respectable Sunni or al Qaida leader desire a released former regime Saddamist?

Frankly I don't pretend to know exactly what's going on here, but I do know that such things tend to reinforce the FUBAR theory on Iraq proposed by the naysayers. Here's my question to them--if Bush made a mistake rounding up these people why let them go? Ever?

After all, their freedom could lead to a risky chat with the press. One of them might even get drunk enough to spill their guts to Keith Olbermann about the whole sordid affair, like explaining the Rummy-Saddam handshake or even the true meaning of Cheney's shotgun accident. No, it would seem much safer for a man endowed with the qualities of Hitler to simply disappear them off to a secret CIA prison and be done with it.

But that hasn't happened.

The head-scratching developments that have occurred suggest the possibility of back room deals not involving politics. The problem is, such deals usually involve bartering chips on both sides. Perhaps Saddam will give us a hint of the possible chips his ex buddies might possess when his trial resumes on the 12th.

MORE 3/8

Regarding my quip about the reporter slacking on her research regarding Mrs. A's reputed medical predicament, she did mention her breast cancer in the article. My suggestion was that she should have dug a little deeper into this claim. We've had several ex-regime members report to such claims. For example, was she released to allow better treatment elsewhere?

But in Mrs A's case she was supposedly working on "the carcinogenic effects of depleted uranium, which had been present in some U.S. bombs and missiles during the 1991 war to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation." Some reporters might have put those job duties together with her cancer claim and smelled a rat, but others apparently take the spent uranium canard as gospel.